The Vape Forward Stout 100W Mod

Vapor Flask/Vape Forward are smart in our book, partnering with Wismec to produce a more affordable mod line with design features not possible without large run production is a smart move. More partnerships with Western design thinking married to Asian production capabilities needs to happen as this industry grows. We are only 1% of the huge tobacco industry (yes, vaping isn’t smoking but it will replace it), as our numbers grow demand will go through the roof, we need to be ready and it’s partnerships like these that will thrive.

That said, there is still some work to be done. We were very excited at the potential of this new partnership. 3 distinctive models all housing the same chip set (a chipset found in the Cuboid, RX200, etc…), but offering different power ratings, size, and hand feel is a great approach. We first had our eyes on the 75W single 18650 Lite, but very quickly changed our mind the second we held the 100W 18650/26650 Stout. The overall design/size and hand feel have the other 2 beat in our opinion. The Stout is a beautiful mod, great fit & finish, weight/hand feel, and aesthetics.

But looks aren’t everything as we all know.

At $90, it’s neither cheap or expensive, but it is still a pretty penny. One would hope for that type of money to get a pretty great mod. On paper the Stout is a great offering, but in practice it has some big issues.

The power rating is not accurate/true, even at the acceptable Ohm/resistance levels you won’t get an atty to fire anywhere near the promised 100W. It does depend on your battery ratings and performance, but on average you won’t get over 85W. Is this a big deal? Well yes, and no. Yes if you want to vape over 85W and no if you don’t, but there is some sensitivity in how honest this product has been advertised. Some of you might have thought about the 150W Classic, decided 100W would be just as good and went for the Stout instead. Well, here lies a problem, now you have a mod that is actually closer to the 75W Lite (plus the expense of purchasing a 26650 battery). On top of this we have experienced some more trouble when vaping in around 0.2-0.3 Ohms, we frequently get ‘Battery Low’ warnings and the mod won’t fire with a fully charged battery.

Battery life also left something to be desired. We had hoped running a highly recommended (Battery Mooch) Brillpower Green 4500 mAh (25A) 26650 would give a really decent battery life, that’s just not the case. Battery life is very similar to what you would expect with a single 18650 mod. If you run it over 50W it only lasts 3-4hrs. 26650s are hard to come by, they aren’t as popular and there are less recommended options out there. So going to the trouble of sourcing one was pretty pointless in the end.

There are a couple nitpicky things on the fit & finish too. Depending on the 26650 you get, you will have various degrees of trouble getting the battery door to close. It’s an awesome feature, but it seems there is a lot of discrepancy in the length of 26650s, which makes it not so easy to use and can create a bit of a gap in the door seam. The smoked plastic cover on the screen/front area feels a little cheap and has a bit of rattle or side to side movement. This smoked plastic also dims down the display brightness quite a bit.

The 22mm tear dropped end is beautiful but may not work/look good with this new 22+mm atty trend. We have also had trouble with some of our attys sitting flush, it seems the 510 is pretty shallow.

It’s a beautiful looking and feeling mod. But it’s $90 and it has some issues. It feels like it was rushed to market, trying to hit the Xmas rush last year (but they missed it). The chip issues need to be sorted, they have released a v2 of the firmware, we didn’t see a huge improvement, but maybe there is hope for the future. The potential in this new partnership is very much still alive, they are so close at offering a product that rivals much high end mods. But we all look for a mod to be reliable with good/decent battery life and right now the Stout is neither. Well if you want to run it under 40W you get decent battery life and reliability, but wouldn’t you have gone for the cheaper and smaller 74W Lite if that was the case?

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One comment

Beautiful, small . Total fail for me because they fake the numbers. I smoke it on 90W and only get about 50 (comparing it with my other 100W mod).
Looks amazing, rubbish performancd. Back to the shop tomorrow.